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What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

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Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#91

Post by mhluongo »

spinchange wrote: post #68
deadmik3 wrote: post #47

Was stringing together a couple dozen tweets really the best format to share a story like this? There is a lot that's left out. Once she vaguely mentions that another employee who was "involved" was still getting all of his peer bonuses (which may or may not have been PB's for his "involvement", we don't know), the whole thing just crumbled into a victim story for me. OF COURSE the MALE coworker can do WHATEVER HE WA…

This post isn't journalism by any stretch of the imagination. It's actually like a perfect caricature of whats wrong with digital publishing. Serious topic on a serious masthead with less than amateur treatment.

Someone sharing something on Twitter isn't supposed to be journalism. AFAIK the original author isn't a journalist, she's a technologist who got fed up.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#92

Post by bronxcoder »

SandB0x wrote: post #61
bronxcoder wrote: post #43

I hate that wage disparity is being heralded as a gender issue. It's really a negotiating problem. My coworker and I were hired together, same position, same experience, and offered the same salary. When I was offered the position, I asked for $15,000 more and they gave it to me. My coworker didn't ask for more and is therefore now making $15,000 less than me. After six months, I asked for a raise of $5,000. He never…

$15,000 relative to what level of salary? And at Google or elsewhere?

The salary we were offered was $75,000. I won't say the company but it's a large financial data provider.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#93

Post by danielweber »

deskamess wrote: post #55

For some reason I was under the impression the spreadsheet was set up to detect gender/ethnicity based inequality in salaries. Not sure where I got that impression as the tweets do not mention it explicitly other than suggesting that some people asked and got increases. At the end of the day, this is what I am curious about - was there inequality in pay, and if so, what was the difference.

The use of the sheet was orthogonal to discovering her peer bonuses weren't being approved.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#94

Post by mhluongo »

deadmik3 wrote: post #47

Was stringing together a couple dozen tweets really the best format to share a story like this? There is a lot that's left out. Once she vaguely mentions that another employee who was "involved" was still getting all of his peer bonuses (which may or may not have been PB's for his "involvement", we don't know), the whole thing just crumbled into a victim story for me. OF COURSE the MALE coworker can do WHATEVER HE WA…

> tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected.

What? Sharing salary information is a protected employee activity, and retaliation is illegal.. so maybe she expected there wouldn't be retaliation?

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#95

Post by pvnick »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66
bronxcoder wrote: post #43

I hate that wage disparity is being heralded as a gender issue. It's really a negotiating problem. My coworker and I were hired together, same position, same experience, and offered the same salary. When I was offered the position, I asked for $15,000 more and they gave it to me. My coworker didn't ask for more and is therefore now making $15,000 less than me. After six months, I asked for a raise of $5,000. He never…

I remember reading some studies that suggest that this alone, i.e. men being more likely to go and ask for a raise / negotiate their salary, can account for most of the "gender gap".

It's an interesting question, what (if anything) should be done to correct this, if this indeed makes up for the majority of gender wage disparities. Ex-Reddit CEO Ellen Pao got rid of wage negotiations altogether to correct for women's supposed inability to negotiate. That seems to me like the wrong way to go about it. I don't know the right answer, but I tend to favor bottom-up solutions (for example, encouraging people to learn negotiation and assertiveness strategies which are valuable for more than just making money) rather than protectionist top-down solutions (eliminating negotiations, affirmative action programs, encouraging litigious environments, etc).

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#96

Post by bronxcoder »

danielweber wrote: post #81
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading some studies that suggest that this alone, i.e. men being more likely to go and ask for a raise / negotiate their salary, can account for most of the "gender gap".

It can be, but , women are also socially pressured, by both men and women, not to negotiate salary. It's a complex issue and you should avoid people on either side who try to scrunch it down to one sound bite.

The social pressure is a cop out. There's social pressure to drink alcohol, eat fast food, keep up with celebrities, etc. and there are plenty of people that don't do it. I think it's derogatory to women that we treat them like they can't think and act for themselves.

Half my team are women and they make more money on average then the guys because they don't take shit from anyone.

It doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman. You will never get what you don't ask for. It's in the best interest of every company to pay as little as the employee will take so every employee has to stand up for themselves.

We can't keep blaming "society" for things we need to do as individuals for ourselves.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#97

Post by rplnt »

Anderkent wrote: post #69
bronxcoder wrote: post #43

I hate that wage disparity is being heralded as a gender issue. It's really a negotiating problem. My coworker and I were hired together, same position, same experience, and offered the same salary. When I was offered the position, I asked for $15,000 more and they gave it to me. My coworker didn't ask for more and is therefore now making $15,000 less than me. After six months, I asked for a raise of $5,000. He never…

Most people also agree that in ideal circumstances you wouldn't have to negotiate your wages (because you're effectively being rewarded for your negotiating skill, which is probably completely irrelevant to your actual productivity and value).

At my first "adult" job, I was actually offered more than I asked for, because the employer used this thing where all employees should fit within limits of a median for any given position (they were ranked somehow so many positions shared same rank).

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#98

Post by nkassis »

zyb09 wrote: post #65

To be honest, what exactly did she want to accomplish with this? Where I live people are very hesitant of sharing their salary and doing something like this would be considered very rude. All it can possibly lead to is drama about salaries. Drama about why some people getting payed more then others. Should Google now start paying each and everyone exactly the same until everyone is happy? No of course not, it's no se…

The issue is your employer has all the information on this. You are negotiating salaries at a disadvantage.

I find the idea that sharing salaries will cause drama highly suspect. Causing some to go and ask for equivalent pay is probably a good thing, managers don't have to go out and give you raises all the time, it's usually on you to push for it. With this information you can have a better idea of what to ask for and make negotiation more efficient.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#99

Post by lifeisstillgood »

I am struggling with the response to this. My questions are

1. Does the spreadsheet really cover 5% or so of google employees? If so it has pretty decent statistical validity despite selection bias etc?

2. Is the spreadsheet accurate, or at least will the reporting differences cancel out?

3. Assuming the above two are correct, and it seems fair to say yes, then whether she used Twitter, or is grinding an ace is totally irrelevant - Google has a fair pay problem, and really needs to deal with it.

On a personal note, a company is not a market. Class's theory of the firm says it eschews market discipline to achieve more efficient allocation of hard to judge resources. and as such I do not believe that saying "negotiate better" is a valid option for a company of this size. It's bad for everyone but the good negotiators.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#100

Post by marrs »

TheWoodsy wrote: post #37
yc1010 wrote: post #3

Can someone please tl.dr this First we had articles spread over dozens of pages for the laugh, now we have articles split into 160char segments, grrrrrr

girl create spreadsheet > insert title, gender, salary > send to everyone > captain obvious comes along to find fluctuating salaries based on things > employees like it, bosses hate it > people send her boss bonus forms > boss rejects them (probably because it should be a bonus based on job performance, not shit-stirring) > make it sound edgy > people stop talking to her > claim sjw for pay equality

3. sue Google 4 $$$
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